Moi Ver | Moshe Vorobeichic
Moi Ver, Self-portrait, 1931 © Yossi Raviv-Moi Ver Archive
Written by Madeline Lerner
This winter, the Museum of Warsaw exhibits the work of Moishe Vorobeichic in Moi Ver. Following his life’s work through Bauhaus, Paris, Eastern Europe, and Palestine, Moi Ver is a retrospective look at the artist’s profound career through a collection of 300 photographs, posters, books, paintings, and documents. An early modernist photographer, Vorobeichic documented important scenes of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and Palestine during some of the most tumultuous times in human history. Vorobeichic, who also went by the name Moi Ver (among other names), was a photographer, painter, graphic designer, and artist, hailing him a treasure of European avant-garde photography from the interwar and later twentieth century.
Moi Ver, exhibition view, © T. Kaczor
Moishe Vorobeichic was born in 1904 in Vilna, Lithuania. He graduated from Bauhaus in Berlin before starting his career in Paris, where he adopted the name Moi Ver. In Paris, he studied painting under Fernand Léger and was a student at the Technical School of Photography, later producing acclaimed photographic books Paris and Ci-Contre in 1931.
Moi Ver, Hairdressing, c. 1928 © Yossi Raviv-Moi Ver Archive
Aside from his art produced in Paris, Vorobeichic developed the skills to produce his acclaimed photojournalistic images simply because he needed to make ends meet beyond his art, and turned to reporting as a second career. From 1920-1937, he regularly returned to Eastern Europe to photograph Jewish communities of Lithuania and Poland. These photos both document Jewish residents as well as their environments and serve as important and unique documentation of a community years before disaster. Vorobeichic immigrated to Palestine in 1934, where he adopted the name Moshe Raviv and continued to focus on documenting Jewish communities and life in kibbutzim through his artwork. By 1950, he had devoted himself almost entirely to painting.
Moi Ver, Mother and Children on Market day, 1937 © Yossi Raviv-Moi Ver Archive
Ver’s photographic work is marked by unstable closeups, double exposures, and other alternative framing, bringing the viewer close to the subject without obscuring them. In other photos, he exhibits his journalistic side in his poignant, documentative stills of the Jewish communities of both Eastern Europe and Palestine. In one photo taken in 1937, Ver documents a mother tending to her two children at a market, all of whom appear to be in tattered, worn clothing. In another, he focuses on an older bearded man for his series Beards, which includes intimate photos of Jewish men in Eastern Europe. Perhaps it's the knowledge of these communities’ tragic near future that makes the photographs so affecting. There is a certain profound intimacy in the physical closeness to the subject, a connection made stronger by Ver’s attention to how light, shadow, and expression shape the face.
Moi Ver, Beards series, 1933-1934 © Yossi Raviv-Moi Ver Archive
His self-portraits reveal a different side to his creative abilities. In layered portraits, he composes exquisite, almost cinematic photographs of himself— their collaged quality and obscure backgrounds resulting in playful and timeless introspections.
Moi Ver, Self-portrait, 1928, Galerie Berinson, Berlin © Yossi Raviv-Moi Ver Archive
Moi Ver’s work exemplifies some of the great early modernist art of the early twentieth century and is a necessary trip through history. See Moi Ver at the Museum of Warsaw in Poland, exhibiting until February 4th, 2024.
